Let's Talk Fundraising
Welcome to "Let's Talk Fundraising" with Keith Greer, CFRE! This podcast is your go-to resource for mastering the essentials of fundraising while discovering how innovative tools and technology can supercharge your efforts. Whether you're a new fundraiser looking to level up your skills or a seasoned professional seeking timely reminders and fresh insights, each episode is packed with practical advice, creative ideas, and inspiring stories.
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Let's Talk Fundraising
Transforming Holiday Generosity: Sustaining Impact Beyond the Season with Leanne Baumel
What if holiday generosity could transform lives beyond the festive season? Leanne Baumel, Chief Development Officer at Casa de Esperanza de los Niños, joins us to share her insights from the frontline of holiday fundraising. We'll unravel the complexities and joys of orchestrating campaigns like "Triple the Hope," which has successfully raised over $550,000, and explore the heartfelt process of bringing Christmas cheer to 350 children. Leanne's stories shed light on the power of donor support in changing lives while also navigating the well-meaning chaos that often accompanies it.
The holiday season brings unique challenges for nonprofits, and Leanne doesn’t shy away from discussing them. With vivid anecdotes, she illustrates how Casa de Esperanza aligns donor intentions with organizational needs, ensuring the dignity and personal touch in family celebrations. We also discuss how setting boundaries and maintaining donor engagement throughout the year is crucial for sustained success. The essence of year-round support, the significance of unrestricted giving, and the importance of strong relationships with corporate donors are pivotal themes that surface throughout our discussion.
Cross-team collaboration and empowering leadership are vital for nonprofits, especially during the bustling holiday months. Leanne shares her journey from a hands-on "doer" to a strategic leader who trusts her team to make impactful decisions. We also touch on creative strategies, such as utilizing Amazon wishlists and engaging corporate partners in unique ways, to streamline operations and maximize donations. Leanne's experience offers a blueprint for nonprofit professionals eager to harness the spirit of the season while ensuring long-term support and growth.
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Hey, there, hi, and welcome back ambitious fundraisers. The holiday season has come and gone, but if you're like most nonprofit professionals, it's left you with plenty to reflect on. Between the heartwarming acts of generosity and the occasional moments that make you shake your head in disbelief, the holidays can bring out every possible side of donor behavior. Today, we're looking back at the holiday season with someone who's been in the trenches and knows the highs and lows all too well. Leanne Baumel, chief Development Officer at Casa de Esperanza de los Niños in Houston, texas, is here to help us unpack what it takes to navigate this busy season with grace, strategy and a commitment to doing right by the people we serve. In this episode, we're talking about donor faux pas, creative ways to reframe holiday giving and how to set boundaries without burning bridges. Leanne will share her experiences, including the power of saying no to what doesn't align with your values, and how her team ensures donors stay engaged long after the holiday lights come down. Whether you're still processing your own holiday season or looking for ideas to carry into the year ahead, this conversation will leave you inspired and ready to take on whatever 2025 throws your way.
Keith Greer, CFRE:So let's talk fundraising. I'm excited to welcome to the show Leanne Baumel, cfre. Leanne is the Chief Development Officer at Casa de Esperanza in Houston, texas, where she leads a team responsible for the agency's fundraising, volunteer management and community functions. Leanne has over 20 years of experience in fundraising and volunteer management, including over 11 years at Casa de Esperanza. As a people-focused leader, leanne strives to cultivate the next generation of fundraisers to inspire impact in the Houston area and beyond. Leanne, welcome to the show.
Leanne Baumel:Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
Keith Greer, CFRE:I'm excited to have you, and let's dive right. In this past holiday season, your team at Casa de Esperanza de los Niños worked tirelessly to bring joy and stability to families in crisis. How was your holiday fundraising this year and what were your major successes?
Leanne Baumel:Holiday fundraising was wonderful as always, and crazy as always. Like so many nonprofits, the bulk of our donations come in those last few weeks of the year, and that stayed true for us this year. We are so fortunate I think this is now the 13th year that we have had a wonderful anonymous donor who will match our year-end campaign two to one. We call that program Triple the Hope. And while the numbers are still coming in, I think combined with the match it's over $550,000. And that's almost 20% of our donations for the year.
Keith Greer, CFRE:That's amazing.
Leanne Baumel:So then, on top of the fundraising, we also do Christmas for 350 kids across all of our programs, and so each child submits a wishlist and gets an entire gigantic bag full of toys and clothes and other necessities, and every one of those items that those kids receive is donated to us, and it is my team who leads the charge in getting all of those donations secured and processed and then off to the program team for distribution. So it's a crazy time of year, but the generosity of the Houston community really is incredible and it's really inspiring to see.
Keith Greer, CFRE:That's wonderful and for those of our listeners that speak Spanish, casa de Esperanza de los Ninos obviously sounds like you're working with children, but to put some context around this conversation, tell us a little bit about your organization's programs.
Leanne Baumel:Yep. So for those that don't speak Spanish, casa de Esperanza means House of Hope and our full name is the House of Hope for Children, and we are a foster care and family support agency that is focused just in the Houston, Texas area. We do voluntary foster care for children birth through six and then wraparound services for their families. So most of our families that come to us it's a lot of parents who they themselves have aged out of the foster care system or have any number of challenges where they are just unable to provide a safe place for their children for a time. And we provide safety and stability and love for those kids and then work with those birth parents to get back up on their feet so that they can provide that safe and stable home for their child. And when that happens, we will continue to work with those families for as long as needed. Occasionally we do an adoption as well and we will provide support to those families. And so we are serving kids from literally days old up until 18 across all of our programs.
Keith Greer, CFRE:Wow, that gives me goosebumps hearing about the work that you're doing. I really love that, and what an incredible time of the year and an important time of the year the holidays must be for a lot of those families that you're serving, because it's not only a very emotionally charged time of the year, but it's also one that's filled with hope and looking towards a brighter future. So what's a moment from this year that really made you stop and say this is why we do this work.
Leanne Baumel:There are so many moments. I think overall, though, it's just seeing the magic of the holidays through the eyes of a child. So many of the kids in our program. Again, they come to us very young, but even the older kids in our program who are four, five, six years old for many of them it's the first time that they have ever had Christmas. It's the first time they've seen a tree. That's the first time they've seen a light. It's often the first time they've received a present.
Leanne Baumel:We've had kids where we have to explain that a present is something that is theirs, that they get to keep, and it's just a really special time of year because of that and we tend to go really big and make sure that it's special for the kids across all of our programs. For me personally, the favorite part of the holiday season is seeing the kids who are no longer in foster care, Because we serve those families for so many years. It's often the touch point where my team gets to follow up with those families who have been with us before and sometimes it's just as simple as seeing a child's name and saying, wow, how are they 10? Last time I saw them they were two. Has it been that many years?
Leanne Baumel:But we had a father who came in this year and his daughter really had a very tough beginning. She came to us as a newborn and really had some struggles because of her history and she is now 17 and has a top GPA. She's starting to look for colleges and has all of these dreams of going to some really wonderful schools in our area and I think she will get there and so moments like that are really special because that's showing the long-term impact and really seeing that what we do matters not just today with keeping that child safe, but it really is changing their lives, you know, for their entire lives.
Keith Greer, CFRE:Oh, absolutely. That is such a special thing to see and to get to be a part of. But let's also be real. Like the holidays bring out the best in people, but sometimes it also brings out we'll just call it well-meaning chaos. What are some of the most unexpected challenges that your team faced this season?
Leanne Baumel:I love the term well-meaning chaos. I'm going to borrow that because it so describes everything that goes on during the holidays. I think I want to start by saying donors really mean well and most of our donors are absolutely fantastic and the majority of them really are doing things the right way. But it's a busy time of year and sometimes our donors just make it a little crazier for us. Like I said, we're doing Christmas for 350 kids, plus running an agency, plus doing our year-end fundraising, and the bulk of our Christmas is happening within about eight or nine days, so all of the gifts are coming in, being sorted in or being distributed in a very short period of time.
Leanne Baumel:Unfortunately, most of the challenges that we see are not all that unexpected. You know, it's things that we see year after year, despite our best efforts to mitigate those challenges. But really I would say there's kind of three key things that we see. The first is timing. Most of us are procrastinators and I'll put myself into that category at times and so donors tend to not think of Christmas until well after Thanksgiving is over. It's those last couple of weeks where they want to step in and do something good. Our team starts Christmas in July.
Keith Greer, CFRE:Wow that early.
Leanne Baumel:And by August we are collecting wishlists and by October we have all of our main donors secured and those wishlists are out to donors. And so when somebody comes to us in the middle of December and says that they want to sponsor a child, it's too late. At that point we can direct them into other ways of giving, but we're often not able to allow them to donate in the way that they want to. The other piece with the timing is that we have deadlines to ensure that we can get the gifts distributed to the children, and donors don't always want to do things on our timeline. They want to do them on their timeline Of course.
Leanne Baumel:Of course right, and so we are trying our darndest to get all those gifts out to our programming team, and if somebody delays by a week or even a couple of days it makes it harder for us. We typically build in extra donations so we have extra toys around, and sometimes by the time a donor will show up with their gifts. We've actually already distributed gifts to the children and we'll use those toys for something else.
Leanne Baumel:The other thing that we see that kind of goes along with that is matching our needs with what the donor wants to do. We hear a lot in fundraising about donor intent and we find people love babies and they love toddlers. Everyone wants to sponsor a baby, donors who want to sponsor a teenager or to do things that aren't as exciting, like donate diapers or Clorox wipes or toilet paper just the things that we need on an ongoing basis, and donors often want to do things their way. So one thing we see a lot of is donors want to wrap the presents, and if a donor wraps the presents, we will, as soon as they walk out the door, unwrap everything that they worked so hard to wrap. And we do that for a couple of reasons. One is so that we can see the gift and make sure that it is what it's supposed to be. But also we want to give our families that opportunity to wrap the gifts themselves. For a lot of our families, for our birth parents, they've never been able to wrap a gift for their child. We would, you know. We want to give them the gift and then some wrapping paper if they need it and let them be able to have that experience so that the gift really is coming from them as the parent.
Leanne Baumel:The final thing that we see a lot of and this is probably my soapbox that I will get on you know, our mission is to keep these kids and our families safe and secure and they have all dealt with trauma and we don't want to do anything that will kind of re -trigger that trauma. And for our kids that can often meet. You know, an event with Santa might be very overwhelming. If there are a lot of strangers around, that's something that could be very overwhelming and we strive really hard to make sure that our clients, and especially the kids, are really treated with dignity and respect and that their needs come first. And again, the donors are often really well-meaning but we can't always accommodate what it is a donor might want to do, if they want to come in and do a big Christmas party with the kids, for example.
Leanne Baumel:There is also a perception and a lot of agencies see this. So for us it's. You know our kids are foster children. It might be, you know, if there is an agency working with unhoused. You know, that there's an unhoused population or there's children who are in a hospital, who are sick, and a lot of people think that, oh well, the foster child should just be grateful for whatever toy it is that they get or for whatever it is that they get.
Leanne Baumel:And we have had donors who have come in with broken crayons, with toys, you know, with headless Barbies. Oh, my gosh. Every once in a while we've literally gotten a backpack that had trash in it. We really strongly feel that every child, every person, deserves that dignity and respect, and just because a child is in foster care doesn't mean that they deserve broken crayons, absolutely.
Leanne Baumel:And so that kind of goes back to why we unwrap all of the gifts that come to make sure that everything, everything is the way that it should be.
Leanne Baumel:You know, we a number of years ago actually across everything, not just that the holiday program made a decision that everything that came into our agency needs to be new, because people have a different idea as to what gently used means Right, and we as a staff just don't have time to be able to sort through all of that. But again, it goes back to the fact that these kids are here because of no fault of their own and often their birth parents, quite frankly, are in our program through no fault of their own that they are part of the system as well, and we want everybody to have a good holiday season and to be treated the way that we ourselves would want to be treated. And if you have any questions about whether or not you should donate a gently used item, I would say if you think it's something that is not in good enough shape for you to give to your own child, it's probably not okay to give it to ours.
Keith Greer, CFRE:That's such a great point. And the donors? They often have their hearts in the right place, but they don't always understand how their actions might cross a line. So how do you kindly but firmly set boundaries when someone shows up with those broken crayons, a headless Barbie, or expects to maybe meet the kids in your care at the holiday party?
Leanne Baumel:It can be really uncomfortable to tell a donor no.
Keith Greer, CFRE:Yeah.
Leanne Baumel:And I think we as the nonprofit community are often so worried about upsetting a donor. We are very donor-centric and we as an entire industry need to understand that it's okay for us to say no to some of these things that come in. We at Casa have really worked hard to get to a place where we as an agency are okay with that. It's taken several years and it's taken really buy-in from leadership for them to say that you know, it's okay if we tell a donor no, because then that empowers everybody on the front lines to be able to make some of those decisions. You know, we start by trying to set some of those boundaries with donors well before they ever show up at our door. If you go to our website and you start looking at what our needs are, we have our frequently asked questions section and a lot of it is can you take used toys, can you take books, can you take blankets, all of the things and it clearly says these are things that we are not able to take. Our office manager at the front desk has a manual and in there it lists all the things that we can and cannot take, and anybody who is sitting at the front desk in her absence has access to that list and I think, probably more importantly, they know that they can call me or somebody on my team, and we're always happy to be the one to tell the donor no, if that's what needs to be said. But one of the things that we have found helps is we maintain a list of other agencies, often partners of ours, that can take those items, and so if somebody calls and says I want to donate stuffed animals, we can say well, you know what? That's something that we can't take, but here's another agency that can, and so the donor appreciates that, because they feel like they're not being told just no, you know, go away. Appreciates that because they feel like they're not being told just no, go away. We're helping to redirect them in a way to be able to make their intent the way they want it to be. It just may not be with us when it comes to donors who are wanting to visit our facility. So I guess, just for some context.
Leanne Baumel:So we are different from a lot of foster care agencies in that we actually have our own neighborhood. It is a gated community built on land that was donated to us, and most of the children who are in foster care live on our property. It is less than 100 yards from the office, but so it's a very visible, tangible place where people can see our program in action. There are a number of homes that are there and they are primarily staffed by AmeriCorps members. So these are young adults who come from all over the country for a service year. They move into our neighborhood and they are providing care to the kids for the time that they are here.
Leanne Baumel:So we do like to bring donors to the neighborhood. It's honestly one of the best things that we can do is to bring a donor into our neighborhood, because then they can really see the program and be able to understand it a lot better. But there are times that we can't do that and there are times where we may not be able to go into a specific home, and it can be as simple as it's nap time, and anybody who is a parent or an aunt or uncle or has been around young children knows that nap time is golden and you don't mess with nap time.
Leanne Baumel:Right, it could also be. You know, if the kids have the flu, we're certainly not going to bring a donor knowingly into that house. Sometimes it's just a bad day where you know and kids are struggling and it is not worth it for us to be able to make it harder on them and harder on that home to bring a donor into that. We also try to really remember that these are people's homes, right, it's not.
Leanne Baumel:I previously worked for an afterschool program and that's a totally different type of program. You know, the kids are there for a short time. We're working in an agency's building, but that's. We're literally going into somebody's home and we're asking them to host us for the time that we are there doing a tour. Sometimes we can do that and sometimes we can't, and one of the advantages that we do have is that we can often bring them into the neighborhood, even if we can't bring them into a specific house, and at least be able to show kind of the outside. They can see the playground, we can talk a little bit about what goes on in the houses.
Leanne Baumel:We might visit a house that is empty in the moment, but we can try to find a way to show the donor the program without necessarily kind of invading the space of our children and our caregivers. We do have signs and places where we can do photos. You know, if somebody needs that Instagram photo, there are places that they can do it without having our children or our caregivers in the mix. So a lot of the setting boundaries is just trying to find other ways to be able to show our donors or give them the opportunity to donate, but just in a way that works a little bit better for us. But I would say overall, having a strong policy in place and making sure everybody at the agency knows that helps make that a little bit better for us. But I would say overall, having a strong policy in place and making sure everybody at the agency knows that helps make that a little bit easier.
Keith Greer, CFRE:And so we hear a lot about holiday giving rushes right and people showing up at the last minute to make those gifts. But nonprofits like yours need support every single month of the year. So what's been your most effective strategy for helping donors understand the importance of year-round giving?
Leanne Baumel:Yeah, 100%. We are in operation 365 days a year and that need never goes away, both with unrestricted cash donations and then our in-kind items as well, the basic needs. We often say whatever it is that you need in your house, we need multiplied out times 10 just to make our agency be able to run on a daily basis. We have limited storage space, so even if somebody were to show up in December and say here's a year supply of diaper wipes, we probably wouldn't be able to accept that because we just don't have the storage space for that. So being able to space things out year round is really critical to us. Storage space for that so being able to space things out year round is really critical to us. What we have found is that the holiday giving is often our launching pad for year round support.
Leanne Baumel:Oh really Most of our donors for our Christmas programs giving the gifts to the kids are coming from corporate programs. We do have some individuals, but most are corporate groups and it is a really easy entry point into engagement with them year round. And, like all things in fundraising, it comes back to the stewardship of that donor and building the relationship with them. Not just that last week of December, from a cash financial contribution at year-end, all of our donors are getting thanked for our year-end campaign. Even as all of this is going on in the background, we're following up with our new donors. Our board was really supportive of that this year in helping us do that. But we really do try to focus on those in-kind donors.
Leanne Baumel:Once the holiday rush is over, we typically invite all of them out to lunch.
Leanne Baumel:In February, march, when it's a little bit quieter, we'll have lunch on the playground, so the kids are there in a little bit more of a casual setting.
Leanne Baumel:It's a time where they can bring their whole team because often it's a team that is putting together these holiday drives and it's a chance for them to learn about our programs, where we're not trying to squeeze it into it to five minutes as a drop off before the next group comes, and it's a really great chance for us in that moment to talk to them about other ways that their company can get involved. And we have found some of our top corporate partners right now started out as Christmas donors, doing things small scales, one of our really most engaged corporate partner. I think they started through Christmas or they may have come and done a volunteer activity before that as well. They're one of our largest financial supporters, individual or corporate. They participate in our gala, they volunteer regularly, they support our back to school program, they support our food pantry, they run a golf tournament. That's a third party event for us. Their vice president serves on our board and it started out just from that one Christmas donation and us being able to grow it from there.
Keith Greer, CFRE:Yeah, and so earlier you were talking about how your organization has come up with policies and procedures for redirecting gifts that your organization might not be able to accept but have been useful elsewhere, and sometimes staying true to your mission means turning down a donation or a request that just does not align. Can you share a time when you had to say no and how it ended up being the right decision for your organization?
Leanne Baumel:Yeah, we had a couple of those this season. Really, I would say every holiday season we have a couple of these. Again, let me say it's hard to be able to say no sometimes to these opportunities, especially because you don't always know where they may lead to. But sometimes those just tough conversations just have to be had. In mid-December we were approached by the representative for a professional athlete, and it was somebody that we had not had a relationship with previously, but he wanted to do an event with the children before Christmas. It literally gave us about a week and a half before Christmas and you know, again, we typically don't do big events during the holidays because there's so much going on. We have a couple of partners that we work with, but you know, we kind of gave this one the benefit of the doubt and said well, you know what, if you want to come do an event and be able to do something with the kids, here are two days and times that we would be able to accommodate you before the end of the year. And they gave us a little bit of pushback on that. But she went to go talk to this athlete and about a week went by with no contact and then she reached back out and said well, what time on this day can we come to be able to deliver everything? Well, that was not a day or a time that we had given her and it was actually the Sunday before Christmas.
Leanne Baumel:By this point my team is off and most of us were out of town at that point. I was not going to ask anybody from the program team to meet with this athlete that we really were not familiar with and we said I'm sorry, but we can't have you deliver that day. You are welcome to come in January. This is when we reopen. We have not heard back from this donor as of this point, although of course, january is still young and we'll do some follow-up on that.
Leanne Baumel:But we knew, and just from a capacity standpoint and the timing of it, that was something that was not going to work for us and it was something that was not going to work for our program team or for our kids. We also turned down the opportunity this year to be the beneficiary of a third-party event. Again, they contacted us fairly late in the year for this, but they were going to require a significant amount of staff involvement with the event and also they were really wanting significant involvement from our board of directors and we knew, going into our busiest time of year that we didn't have the capacity for that and that for us it would be better to spend our time working with the donors that we knew that we had and closing those year end gifts, and so we politely declined and I think we're working with this group to be able to do something later in the year. But for us we just weren't able to accommodate.
Keith Greer, CFRE:I always find those organizations that reach out saying, well, like we'd like to give you money if you commit to a ton of volunteer hours for a whole bunch of people, and so there's a lot of unlearning that kind of needs to happen around how people think that they're helping what's worked for your team when it comes to gently re-educating donors who genuinely want to do good but might not realize that their approach needs tweaking.
Leanne Baumel:I think the two keys are repetition, repetition, repetition and then to also start with the low-hanging fruit. A lot of these changes aren't going to happen overnight. It may take years for there really to be a cultural shift in that and I would say for us, not taking used items is something that has taken years to really make that shift. But start with the low-hanging fruit. And, just as an example, we receive well over a thousand gift cards during the holiday season. So these are gift cards that are being used for gifts for some of the teens. They get used for our programs, kind of any number of ways. But accounting, as they should, insists that every single gift card gets logged with the amount because it's cash in and cash out. And if a donor doesn't mark the amount on the gift card, it's very, very time consuming for my staff to go through every one of those gift cards and be able to find out the amount. And there are certain stores, such as Amazon, that you can't do online. You actually have to call and talk to a real person to be able to find out the amount on the gift card. We have a donor who's been doing a gift card drive for us for a number of years. That's what they do. It's just gift cards. And a couple of years ago they used to come in and it would literally be a basket just filled with gift cards and not a single one of them would be marked and it would take somebody like the better part of a day to go through them. And a couple of years ago we said to the organizer hey, it would be a lot easier on us if we knew how much the gift cards were. Do you think it would be possible for your employees to mark the amount on the gift cards before they turn them into you? She was horrified. She had never thought about that being an issue and she was so upset that she was causing us additional work. And so now, when the basket of gift cards comes in, not only are they all marked this year she even had a spreadsheet for us that listed every gift card, the amount, everything that we could ever need to know but we were able to log those gift cards in in about 15, 20 minutes, versus it taking half a day. And so that was a really easy low-hanging fruit where it was just a very simple ask for somebody we had a relationship with. Again, it goes back to relationships. You can have those conversations, but it made it so much easier.
Leanne Baumel:I think it's also really important for donors to understand the why behind some of the rules. You know, when we say, well, we need to have donations in by December 12th is well, we need to have them in by December 12th because most of our kids don't live on site. We need time to be able to get them to their families, or it's not, you know, hey, no, we can't go visit the neighborhood. It's? We can't visit the neighborhood because right now it's nap time and all of the kids are sleeping and we don't want to disturb that. So if a donor understands the why behind it, then often they're much more understanding and they're willing to work with you on it.
Leanne Baumel:The other thing quite frankly, we have gotten much better at keeping notes on our Christmas donors, and that's both the donors that we call the one and done you know where they come in and they have everything a child could ever want, and it's just, you know it's ready to go out the door immediately but also the donors that consistently give us challenges.
Leanne Baumel:We have one corporate partner that we've worked with for a number of years and every year they push deadlines a little bit. This year they pushed them a lot. They pushed deadlines a little bit. This year they pushed them a lot. They rescheduled three or four times and wound up coming literally hours before our office closed for the holiday season. And next year we have it in our notes that we probably won't offer them the opportunity to do gifts for the kids, for them, something that is less time sensitive right, and we need diapers in January too but something where it's not as critical. That we have something in by deadline is going to be a better fit for them and it's going to give them the chance at being successful in what they do and it's going to cause a lot less stress on our team as well.
Keith Greer, CFRE:I love what you were talking about here with changing the culture of the organization, and it takes a long period of time, right? And so you talked about the repetition, repetition, repetition and starting with those low-hanging fruits. And I think so many people, so many fundraisers, when they come into a nonprofit organization, they look around them and they see all the opportunity for improving it, because they're coming in with those fresh eyes versus the people who've been there for forever right, but they get burnt out and overwhelmed, trying to change it all overnight, and then, 18 months later, when things aren't the magical world that they envisioned on day one, they decide to get up and leave. How long did it take you to start seeing those changes within your organization so that you could get to this better place that you're at now? I mean you've been there 11 years. At what point do you start seeing those changes?
Leanne Baumel:Yeah, some of it is immediate. When I came in and my role at the time was actually to be in charge of the Christmas program we didn't ask our donors to label the gifts as for which child Right that they were for and if it's a single individual donor coming in with the gifts for one child. You know that's pretty easy to figure out. But we have some corporate donors that do gifts for 50, 60 or more children and I guess what would happen before is they would just take all the gifts.
Leanne Baumel:They would, you know, take them out of the bags and then they would fill wish lists from a list based off of this. And I said, can we just have the donors label the gifts? And I was told, oh, they would never do that. And I was like, but you know, we're going to try. We're just we're just going to try and we'll see what happens. By and large, almost every donor that year labeled the gifts with the child's code and it made things so much easier, right? So sometimes you just have to.
Leanne Baumel:You have to ask, but for some things it is. It's taken a lot longer. You know, 11 years in, we still struggle sometimes with those headless Barbies, you know people bringing in things that that clearly they shouldn't. But we've had slow but steady progress and I would say every year Christmas gets better. And I would say every year Christmas gets better, and some years it's that we really need to focus on the headless Barbies and some years it's that we really need to focus on how we do our tours to be able to make it easier on the neighborhood. But we're able to improve things a little bit every year. The advantage that we have too is that my guess is that of our holiday donors, of our corporate groups, probably 90% of them were here 11 years ago. So we have some that have left and we have some new ones that have come in, but a lot of these are some really long-term relationships where it's made it easy to really have some good conversations with the donors to be able to better express our needs.
Keith Greer, CFRE:So what I hear you saying is that it's about progress over perfection, because all of us know perfection does not exist.
Leanne Baumel:Correct.
Keith Greer, CFRE:And.
Leanne Baumel:I would say, for us, this is the one time of year you know, you hear, you don't want good or perfect to get in the way of good enough. Good or perfect to get in the way of good enough, um, that for us, often good enough is, is just fine. You know that if, at the end of the day, 350 kids have the gifts that they need, um, you know we're, we know it's, there's gonna be bumps every year. Some expected some, not um, but we'll get through it and and we'll improve it for next year.
Leanne Baumel:Um, what we do for every event and this is, you know, like our gala, but we do it for Christmas too we always debrief. We have a whiteboard in our area where we'll, you know, just start putting you know for this year, christmas, you know, what do we keep, what do we change? And just we start, you know, dumping all of those things on there. We take a picture of it, and next, of those things on there, we take a picture of it and next year we'll pull that out and say, all right, this is what we now can remember worked really well, this is what didn't work so well and what we need to work on, and so we have that record as well.
Keith Greer, CFRE:And so getting all of these toys and all of these gifts in kind, it's a lot of work, and so we've all heard the phrase just give us the cash. But it's not always that simple right. So how does Casa de Esperanza navigate the balance between getting those cash gifts and the in-kind donations to meet your family's needs?
Leanne Baumel:Wouldn't it be great if everyone just gave us unrestricted gifts?
Keith Greer, CFRE:It'd be so nice, and millions at a time too.
Leanne Baumel:And we're still waiting for Mackenzie Scott to show up at our agency doors.
Keith Greer, CFRE:Oh, me too.
Leanne Baumel:That would be wonderful. It is a balancing act for us. We are an agency of people who are caring for people and we have very few expenses other than the expenses of our staff and then what it takes to maintain our homes. And while some of that can be done in kind, a lot of it just can't, and we need those unrestricted dollars. We need donors who are willing to pay for a caregiver's salary so that our kids can be cared for.
Leanne Baumel:The in-kind donations, though year-round, do help us stretch our dollars a lot better. Every diaper that is donated is one less diaper we have to go out and purchase ourselves. We get a lot of donations through the year of things like diapers, wipes, clorox wipes, dish soap, canned goods and whatever it is that you need in your house. Just bring it to us. We maintain an Amazon wishlist so donors can always know what our most pressing needs are. We keep it updated with all the things on top.
Leanne Baumel:But again, what we found is as frustrating sometimes as the in-kind donations are. So often those relationships that start with an in-kind donation are what lead to the dollars down the road. We have a corporate partner and one of our top corporate partners, and they're an engineering firm and they every year do a canned good sculpture contest. And when I say canned good sculptures, they literally computer model these figurines. This year they Minions and Cinderella's Castle, and you know, it's really quite impressive. And they then donate all of the canned goods to us, which is really wonderful. It, quite frankly, fills our pantry for months. Well, last year, I think, anything that was red was they use like diced tomatoes. And this year our program team said to me they're like we don't need that many diced tomatoes or tomato sauce, like do you think that they could do Chef Boyardee like ravioli instead?
Leanne Baumel:Oh you know what they absolutely could. It's a longtime partner. It literally took 30 seconds in an email to say, hey, can you cut the tomatoes and do Chef Boyardee in an email to say, hey, can you cut the tomatoes and do Chef Boyardee. And what that allows, though, is it makes what they're giving us as an in-kind donation more valuable, because our families need easy to heat, pre-prepped meals, because they often don't have kitchens to be able to cook homemade tomato sauce in right with the diced tomatoes. So it's being able to find the needs as to where those in-kind things are and what we really need, and being okay to actually communicate what those needs are to the donor so that they're not giving us tomatoes if we don't actually need tomatoes.
Leanne Baumel:Another really wonderful donor we have is a corporate partner of ours. Her team collects money just on the team every month, and she literally emails us once a month and says all right, tomorrow is the day we go to Sam's what do you need? And we give her the list. She shows up the next day, nothing more, nothing less than what we have told her that it is that we need in the moment. You know our needs change. One month we may need diaper wipes and the next month it may be that we need. In the moment, you know, our needs change One month we may need diaper wipes and the next month it may be that we need Clorox wipes. But it's great because we know that every month she is going to go to Sam's for us and we can plan actually our spending, knowing that okay, well, you know, in a week or so we're going to, we can tell her that this is what we need so we can go buy something else.
Leanne Baumel:What's also really wonderful is that, because her team is so involved with us locally, that allows us to tap into $50,000 a year from their corporate foundation that we receive every year that then we can use for other things. But it's that relationship that came from the SAMS delivery that is then allowing us to access those funds, and we have a number of donors like that. We received a surprise $25,000 donation this fall from somebody who's been doing Christmas for years, and the company asked the employees who they wanted to give the gift to, and we were the ones who were nominated. And so it is often a balancing act of trying to navigate the in-kind donations versus the cash donations, but if you can build the relationship with the in-kind. It's like volunteers If you can build a relationship with somebody who wants to engage as a volunteer, then often the money follows, and we find that with our Christmas as well as our year-round in-kind donations.
Keith Greer, CFRE:Yeah, I love that and the money follows, and we find that with our Christmas as well as our year-round in-kind donations yeah, I love that, and the holiday season, specifically, can be a really high-pressure time of the year, right? Not just for your nonprofit, but for any of them. So how do you ensure your team both your staff and your volunteers because you also manage the volunteers stay on the same page when it comes to enforcing boundaries and keeping the focus on your mission?
Leanne Baumel:I think it all boils down to the culture that we have worked really hard to create at CASA, especially over the last couple of years. We are a small agency. Without the caregiving staff, our entire staff is about 25 people and that's everything from development to our caseworkers to the leadership team, and we have really been able to break down the silos over the last couple of years and it is a truly collaborative culture across all of the teams, and so that in itself makes things so much easier when it gets really chaotic for the holidays. It really just boils down to communication and to empower the staff also to be able to make decisions that they, quite frankly, are really qualified to be able to make. Our office manager has gotten really good at telling donors no, we can't accept that. If she has a question, you know any doubt at all, she will call me or somebody on my team to see if that's something that we can accept, you know. At the same time, she knows, you know and anybody on the staff knows, that we're going to work with them to be able to have conversations with a donor or volunteer. If they don't want to have that conversation, we're happy to be the bad guys. But I think it's also about involving the people who the boundaries impact in the decisions about what those boundaries are right. So when we get a last minute request for a tour, often my conversation to the neighborhood is hey, can I bring somebody by in five minutes? If I can't, we'll just. My conversation to the neighborhood is hey, can I bring somebody by in five minutes? If I can't, we'll just bring them to the neighborhood and we'll stay outside and that's okay. And so they know that they can say, yes, this house is fine to take on guests in five minutes. And they know that it's okay to say we just cannot handle that right now. Please don't come near any of our homes and we'll just find an alternate way to be able to show the donor our program. The same thing with donations. I start a lot of conversations to the program team with I'm pretty sure you're going to say no, but we were just offered a green piano. That happened a couple of weeks ago. Before I tell them no, I just want to confirm with you that that's not something we need and they'll laugh and say, no, that's not something that we need and we'll go from there. But it's empowering them to have a say about the boundaries that I'm setting with the donors, because it does me no good to accept something if the program can't use it. And then we're just trying to figure out what to do with a grand piano or 10 cases of diced tomatoes or whatever it is that we have During the holiday season too.
Leanne Baumel:What has really helped this year? So we're on a hybrid work schedule in the office and most people are remote one to two days a week, but for the two weeks really leading up to Christmas it was all hands on deck. Nobody worked remote, nobody could take PTO unless it was an emergency. We communicated this in February, so everybody had plenty of time to plan their doctor's appointments. For the amount of diapers and wipes we thought was coming, people are there to help unload the truck and get it put away. If there were questions about a donation. We were all just there, kind of in the same room often.
Leanne Baumel:What was also really great about that is you know, we don't always get to work with people in different teams and we were literally all just doing the same thing together. It was great team building. It was a great chance for my team to get to know some of the program team members a little bit better and vice versa, and just be able to have conversations, you know, outside of kind of our normal day to day that we have. It's also really key, I think, when it comes to setting boundaries and I said this earlier leadership is so important and during the really busy holiday season one, you know, our leadership just empowers us to make the decisions that we know are right. There may be times where we kind of run the sniff test through our CEO, but very rarely does she disagree with anything that we're saying, and everybody from the top down was involved in the process.
Leanne Baumel:Our CEO wasn't always the one in there sorting gifts with us, but because my team was actually very short staffed, we were down some people. During the holiday season I often sent very cryptic messages to my CEO and just said something like we haven't heard from Keith, please call him, and she would know what that meant and she would follow up with a donor and kind of follow up on a pledge or a year end ask or make that thank you. She's a former development director and so she knows how to use our database and I didn't have to give her a lot of information. She could just take it and run with it. But then that took the pressure off of me and my team to be able to do a lot of other things.
Leanne Baumel:We had board members. We had a small team of board members who did most of our thanking for the donors that came in for our year-end campaign. So a couple of times a week we would just shoot them a list of names and emails and they would just take care of doing those thank you calls for us, and we literally had two board members who were there sitting on the floor with us, you know, sorting gifts and we're there. One was there almost the entire day, just in the thick of it. And so when leadership is involved, I think it makes it easier on everybody because they know that they're not doing it alone. It's again, it's just the culture of everybody is pitching in and we're just going to make it happen. And it's again, it's just the culture of everybody is pitching in and we're just going to make it happen.
Keith Greer, CFRE:There's a word that you said a few times there that I think is really important, especially as a people-focused leader, and that's empowerment. Right and being able to empower your staff to make decisions, and I think so many leaders, whether they're the CEO or they're leading a team of development officers there's a fear, and they're scared to see what their staff is going to do if they empower them, and so they become micromanagers of the process and their teams become paralyzed to do anything without a specific direction. How did you get comfortable with empowering your team?
Leanne Baumel:Yeah, it's a process. What I struggled with, I think, the most in leadership. So I've been at CASA for almost 12 years now and I've been in this role for three and a half years and at that point I had to shift from being a doer to the leader of the team, where other people were the doers. It was hard for me to let go of some of those things, and it wasn't because I didn't necessarily trust my team to do it, but I was just so used to doing it and it was hard for me, at the end of the day, to not have, like a product that I could show for my work. You know, I didn't make phone calls or I didn't crank out a social media post or write an appeal, and it took some time, and really just me working on myself, to realize that if my team is doing those things, then that's the product. Right, that's what I've done and it's okay for me to invest my time in them and let them do the do the doing.
Leanne Baumel:You know I think my leadership style has always been you know, I've hired you to do a job. I am not going to do it for you. You know, if I trust you to do this job, like at some point you just have to do it on your own. I'm probably too trusting sometimes with that, but we have a great team and a great staff and we really work. You know, look for people who fit in or just want to jump in and do what needs to get done, and I think that makes it easier because there's nobody on my team who won't just jump in first. We actually had a grant manager who started her first day of work was our busiest donation day of the year this year and we literally said, you know, hello, welcome, we'll talk to you about grants in a couple of weeks. Like here's a bag and yeah, she's been in social services for a long time and she's like okay, I got it, you know, done, and that's just. That's just kind of who we are as a team, who we are as an agency.
Keith Greer, CFRE:I love that, and so, as you're reflecting on this holiday season, what's one lesson that stood out to you about working with donors, managing their expectations or keeping your organization's values really front and center?
Leanne Baumel:This is so much of a lesson. It's just kind of the reminders that we need. I'm going to give you two things and not just one. The first is that, to remember, more donors will surprise you in good ways than will surprise you in bad ways. And it's easy to focus on the challenges and the frustrations and that you know I can't believe that somebody just did this, but the reality is that most people are going to surprise you with the good things and you need to be able to celebrate those.
Leanne Baumel:Absolutely we have a local law firm that we've been involved with for a while. They like to buy things. We can call them and say, hey, we need cribs, and they'll buy cribs for us and ship them. But they reached out in mid-December when things are crazy. But they said for two things One, we want to make a cash donation to you how do we do that? But then also is there an immediate need that you have that we can fill and our houses in the neighborhood? We had put on some Christmas wishlists. They wanted family size air fryers, some blenders, new diaper pails and those items hadn't come in and we said here are a couple of things that we need. I'm not kidding when I said five hours later those items were delivered from Target.
Keith Greer, CFRE:Oh, that's wonderful.
Leanne Baumel:Three of everything. You know exactly what it was that we wanted and I think what was really wonderful about that was, you know, I was one of our busiest days of the year. It just quietly came right. Our office manager called and she's like Target delivered some stuff for you. You know, come and get it. It wasn't about the social media post, it wasn't about them, it was just here's a need that we have and they're going to fill it, and I think it made the neighborhood stay to be able to have these. So, you know, things like that are really wonderful surprise.
Leanne Baumel:The other thing is that while we all want the really big cash gifts right, we want the, you know, we want Mackenzie Scott to show up Sometimes it's the small gifts that actually have the most meaning and we need to honor those gifts as well. This was actually a year or two ago, but we have a donor. He's an older gentleman. He's been sending us $5 a month for I believe, 25 years at this point, every single month without fail, and at Christmas he sent us $7. For him that was probably really a stretch, right, and it's easy to look at it and be like, oh, it's $2. But for him that was clearly like a thought about like extra help that he could get, and that was something that we celebrated and made sure that he got an extra thank you from our CEO and really honored that, because for him those extra $2 probably meant as much as a $100,000 gift might mean to somebody else.
Keith Greer, CFRE:Absolutely, and I love that because that's almost a 50% increase in a donation for him and for somebody that's on a fixed income. They're really watching every dollar every single week, and so to be able to find an extra $2 when they're that tight just goes to show the kinds of relationships that you're building and how important they are not only to your program participants and your client, but to your donors as well. So I really love that. But if you could wave a magic wand and you could make every donor understand just one thing about supporting nonprofits during the holidays, what would it be?
Leanne Baumel:Unrestricted cash gifts.
Keith Greer, CFRE:Yes.
Leanne Baumel:But seriously, I think for donors to realize that most nonprofits are professionally run by people who really know what the needs of the clients and the organization are and we know what we need best. And that could come from a donor in a gift of an unrestricted cash donation. But for those that want to give an in-kind gift, just ask us what we need, because we are going to be so happy to tell you what it is that will be most helpful to us. But trust us to know what we need.
Keith Greer, CFRE:Well, Leanne, I am so happy to have you here on the podcast and this was just such a great recap of the holiday season and kind of looking forward for the year ahead, and I really appreciate you taking the time to share your insights and your successes and also to talk about some of these really important leadership pieces for managing teams and donors and volunteers, not just during the holidays but all year long. So thank you for being here.
Leanne Baumel:Thank you so much, Keith. This has really been an honor.
